


In my father's house.

by orange_crushed



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Castiel's Trenchcoat, Future Fic, Kid Fic, M/M, Transformation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-10
Updated: 2013-12-10
Packaged: 2018-01-04 05:26:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1077055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orange_crushed/pseuds/orange_crushed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>…<i>of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day.</i> - John 6:39</p>
<p> </p>
<p>"We like the eco-safe recycled fiber rug with the post-consumer textile pad," Castiel tells her. "In spring fields, I think."</p>
<p>"Just call it green," Dean mutters. Under his chin, in the BabyBjorn, Marie’s making tiny smacking noises with her mouth, drooling in her sleep and fussing a little, curling her hands into tiny fists against his chest. Dean jiggles her up and down a little bit with one knee and puts his lips against her hat; it’s not quite a kiss, it’s mostly so that he can feel the warmth of her tiny head through the knit cap, feel her solid and safe against him. When he looks up, the saleswoman is gone to get them an order form, and Castiel is staring at him like Dean just opened his mouth and actual stars came out. He looks sort of awed. "What?" Dean says, and shifts in his seat. "What’d I do?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	In my father's house.

When Karen opens the lid of the washer she makes a grossed-out face and slams it shut again. “Ugh,” she says. “Somebody left their stuff in here and it _stinks_.” She picks another washer and dumps the next load in there instead. It’s not her job to clean out other people’s garbage, even though her first instinct is to scoop it out and dump it. She’d be doing Mrs. Greene a favor. But after the wash cycle starts and she’s settled in with a magazine, she looks up and sees her son with his head bent over the full, smelly washer. He’s been sitting in a plastic chair by the vending machines, ignoring her and playing _bejazzled_ or whatever the heck it’s called on his phone, and now he’s staring at the dirty clothes with a funny expression on his face. Karen watches him and wonders what he’s thinking.

"Whoa. This is disgusting," Dell says. And then he leans further in and sticks his hand right into the clothes, and Karen rolls her eyes to the ceiling. It’s the moldy boot thing all over again. He better end up a scientist, Karen thinks.

"Better wash your hands," she says. "God knows what that mess is."

"I think it’s blood," Dell says. Karen tries not to notice how delighted he sounds. He looks up at her, eyes bright, looking more like the baby she made than the man he keeps pretending to be. He glances down again, and then back up at her. "You think it’s blood in there?"

"I think it’s none of our business."

"Look," he says, like she’s just talking to herself. He reaches in again and pulls out a stained trenchcoat, tan, with a belt. The kind of coat guys at church wear, plain and big and boring. "This is cool." Karen stares at him. His definition of cool changes daily, but she’s not sure he’s ever characterized a church coat that way. "Can I wash this?"

"It’s not yours."

"Nobody’s been here for hours," he argues. He puts the coat up against his face and sniffs it.

“ _Dell Andrew McKnight_ , you did not just-“

"-it smells super musty. Somebody left it." He gives her the same earnest face she sees all the time in the electronics department at K-Mart, and then puts his hand in his pocket, comes up with some quarters. "I’ll wash it. If somebody comes back for it, then I did them a favor."

"You can’t just take a man’s clothes," she tells him. "Go ahead, wash it if you want. But it stays here." He scowls and thumbs the quarters into the slots as an act of resistance, shoves the coat into the machine and shuts the lid. The washer hums to life and Dell goes back to his plastic chair and doesn’t say anything else for half an hour. After a while Mrs. Greene comes in and says hello; she and Karen talk for a while as the older woman tides up, wipes down the dusty lids of the machines and sweeps the floor and empties the coins from the dryers. Karen tells her about the load that Dell is washing and Mrs. Greene sighs.

"It was there yesterday, too. I asked Kevin to take it out. Guess he thought somebody would be back for it."

"I _told_ you,” Dell says, from behind the other row of washers. He’s holding his arms straight up in the air like he’s won something. He points at his mother. “I told you!”

They take the coat home, wet, in a plastic bag. Dell hangs it up to dry in the shower and even after that it’s a faded, wrinkled mess with a big dark stain running down the right side, like the person who was wearing it took a crowbar to the ear. It freaks Karen out, but Dell says it’s perfect. On Saturday morning he refuses to come downstairs for breakfast, tells her he’s busy. Instead, he shows up for lunch wearing the coat, with a huge bloody gash on the side of his head and bright red gore splashed down the front of him. Karen takes one look and drops her plate and screams and takes his bloodied face between her hands; they come away covered in makeup. Dell laughs so hard he has to sit down on the ground on his knees, holding his stomach.

"Oh, you think you’re so funny," she fumes. 

"Braaaaiiins," Dell says. He gets up and turns a slow circle. "What do you think?" He’s wearing a button-down shirt and tie and the big coat flops around him like a cape; he’s rolled the sleeves up into cuffs just above his skinny wrists. "Check me out. I’m a businessman zombie. Got bit in a big meeting. _Grrragh_ ,” he says, and lunges for her arm. Karen shrieks and pretends to bat at him and they run a little circle around the kitchen, laughing, Dell shuffling with his arms out straight and Karen putting furniture in his way like they do in the movies. She makes him take the make-up off, but tells him what a good job he did, how scary it was, first. Dell beams at her and it’s hard for her not to kiss him on the forehead like he’s still five. He wears the coat to school and takes third place in the costume contest. He trick-or-treats in it, too. Some of his friends are already too grown-up for that. Karen thinks next year he’ll want to go to a party instead of taking a pillowcase around the neighborhood, but at least for now he and Chuckie and the twins down the block seem happier with candy than with being cool.

The trenchcoat goes into the hall closet (under a plastic garbage bag because it’s still smeared with make-up) and next year Dell goes as a business zombie again, this time with a plastic axe stuck in his head for effect. But the next year he goes to school dressed like a guy from an action movie, and they both forget about the coat entirely. When Dell moves up to tenth grade the coat goes into a box of old clothes he doesn’t want, and then to the goodwill. 

At the goodwill the volunteer sorting clothes takes one look at it, shakes her head, and holds it up for a friend to stare at. “Beth,” she says. “Beth, look up.”

"Wow," Beth says. "That’s gross. Is that real?"

"I think it’s makeup."

"Thank God."

They put it in a box marked RAG RECYCLING along with ruined old aprons, torn-up sweatpants, dirty jeans. And then they cover it as the sorting goes on. It vanishes under ripped band t-shirts and stained sports uniforms. It is buried in winter coats with the linings hanging out and the elbows bare.

It disappears.

 

 

 

"Is it really that important?" Dean huffs. Castiel gives him a narrow stare across the sample book, and Dean shrugs. "Like, it’s a carpet. She’s not going to literally eat it."

"Can you think of a single thing she’s yet encountered," Castiel says, slowly, carefully, like Dean is a fucking ding dong, "that she _hasn’t_ tried to put her mouth on?”

"Um," says Dean.

"And besides," Castiel adds, self-righteously, sounding like an even crunchier version of Sam, "it’s recycled. That’s important." He turns back to the saleswoman. "We like the eco-safe recycled fiber rug with the post-consumer textile pad," Castiel tells her. "In spring fields, I think."

"Just call it green," Dean mutters. Under his chin, in the BabyBjorn, Marie’s making tiny smacking noises with her mouth, drooling in her sleep and fussing a little, curling her hands into tiny fists against his chest. Dean jiggles her up and down a little bit with one knee and puts his lips against her hat; it’s not quite a kiss, it’s mostly so that he can feel the warmth of her tiny head through the knit cap, feel her solid and safe against him. When he looks up, the saleswoman is gone to get them an order form, and Castiel is staring at him like Dean just opened his mouth and actual stars came out. He looks sort of awed. "What?" Dean says, and shifts in his seat. "What’d I do?"

Castiel doesn’t say anything; he just reaches forward and puts his hand against Dean’s cheek for a second, and then drops it to rest on the curve of Marie’s skull, cradling it with the same tenderness. Sometimes Dean forgets he was an angel- forgets it when he stinks up the bathroom or drops canned tuna on his bare feet and gets a bruise. Dean forgets he wasn’t always a man, the warm thing that Dean sleeps against, some guy that likes crosswords and mashing the potatoes by hand at holidays. But sometimes, like this, Castiel makes him remember. He knows it’s not just a touch when Castiel gets this way; it’s a blessing, _deus tecum, benigno numine_ , divine power gone from his fingers but divine love still and always, the only mystery left in Dean’s faith. 

"You’re right," Castiel says. "It is just a carpet."

"It’s fine," Dean says. He feels himself smiling, he can’t help it. "It’s fine. I want things to be good, too. For us."

"I know you do," says Castiel. 

They have to move all the furniture out of the nursery for two days while the new carpet goes in, and if Dean obsessively vacuums three times afterwards to make sure the fiber particles and dust are all gone, well, that’s his business. Sam comes over and helps them get the enormous ugly so-called ‘heirloom’ changing table back through the doorway and then plays with Marie while Dean makes dinner for all of them. He comes in to tell them the pasta’s done and finds Sam and Castiel sitting cross-legged on the new carpet, laughing, with Marie between them. She’s ignoring the stuffed bear and the plastic blocks. Instead she’s curled her miniature hands into the rug and she’s rubbing her face into the fibers and drooling and looking high as a kite, indescribably pleased with herself for no reason. 

"Well," Dean says, "looks like we made the right call." He kneels down and Marie rolls over, reaches out for him insistently with both arms, cooing. "Floor tastes good, huh? You spoil your dinner?" She grabs his face and he picks her up, holds her against his chest. Her tiny heart flutters with his.

"The room looks nice, guys," Sam says. "Really, really nice." Dean looks around at the yellow walls and the pressed leaves and flowers in frames, things Castiel found in the woods and brought home years ago. At the painted second-hand furniture and the stuffed animals on the dresser and a row of children’s books that she can’t even follow yet, but that Castiel reads to her almost every night, voice low like a warm car engine, Dean on the sofa beside him, falling asleep at the same time she does. Dean looks at the stars on the ceiling and then down at the floor, wiggles his toes in the fibers of the rug. They feel good. Right, somehow.

"Hey," Dean says. He shrugs at Castiel, and smiles. Cas smiles back. "We got good taste."

 

 

.


End file.
